Difficulties in learning a foreign language students who have disabilities, development of effective teaching methods. Multisensory structured language, the correlation value between the stimulation of the self-esteem of students, improved achievement.
Аннотация к работе
Teaching foreign language to students with learning difficulties A.S. Evmenova, PhD More often than before educators, including foreign language teachers, face increasing numbers of students with diverse, special learning needs. Needless to say the first assumption is that students labeled as having learning disability, cannot learn foreign language (L2). However, for those immigrating into English-speaking country learning the language is not a preference but a necessary survival skill. As noted by Sparks, the common problems occurring in L2 learning are even more complicated for English learners as written English uses a deep (opaque) orthography in which sounds (phonemes) often have multiple spellings. For example, the phoneme /k/ can be spelled several ways: cat, kite, back, and character [Sparks 2009: 3]. The debate in the literature exists about the onset of learning difficulties in foreign language learning. Some researchers insist on the existence of the unique disability - foreign language learning disability (FLLD; [Grigorekno 2002; Hu 2003; Reed & Stansfield 2004]), while others suggest that even students without any identified learning disability may fail foreign language courses [Sparks, Humbach, & Javorsky 2008; Sparks, Philips, & Javorsky 2002). Thus, L2 learning “occurs along a continuum of very strong or very weak learners” [Sparks 2009: 8]. Unfortunately, some students exhibit inordinate difficulty with and may fail language courses. Thus special attention to developing effective teaching methods is required for these students. Regardless of the term usage, many researchers and practitioners tackle the problem of lacking effective instructional methodologies aimed to provide necessary accommodations and supports for students at-risk for having challenges in L2 learning. The strong relationship between skill proficiency in native language (L1) and foreign language has been demonstrated in the literature [Koda 2005; Verhoeven 2000]. Interestingly, it is suggested that students learning more regular, transparent alphabets (e.g., Greek, Russian, German) are able to reach L2 proficiency faster than students learning less regular, opaque alphabets (e.g., English, French; [Wolf 2007]). Thus, cross-linguistic transfer or overlap between languages knowledge and skills needs to be taken into consideration when developing effective teaching methods. Multisensory structured language (MSL) approach incorporates direct teaching of L2 with the development of skills in the students’ native language such as phonology and grammar [Sparks, Schneider, & Ganschow 2002]. An MSL approach to teaching L2 uses “the direct and explicit teaching of the phonology/orthography (spelling-sound relationships), grammar (syntax) and morphology (meaning units) systems of the foreign language.